"As applied in practice, "wrecking" and "sabotage" could refer to any actions which could be broadly construed to negatively impact the economy in some way, including failing to meet economic targets, causing poor morale among subordinates, lack of effort, or alleged or real incompetence. Thus, it referred to economic or industrial sabotage only in the very broadest sense. Many who were charged were merely scapegoats. In many cases, even those who were not engaged in industrial activity (including scientists) were charged with wrecking."

I'm pretty sure he also said "If you like the insurance you have, you can keep it."

A person can remember the weasel words some of the time... but every one slips some of the time, and he repeated himself on this "promise" often.

And Jeremy... give it up. You were there calling the rest of us liars when we pointed out that this was not a promise Obama had the power to make, that people would not get to keep their insurance just because they wanted to keep their insurance.

Synova, Jeremy isn't defending Obama as much as he's hating on Althouse and her commenters. One's just a byproduct of the other. Since it's the hate that drives him, he can justify any position he wants.

Somehow, we collectively ignored all the statements O made during his campaign and before. Statements like he wanted to redistribute the wealth (To Joe the Plumber), that if a company wanted to mine coal or sell it, it would bankrupt itself, that the cost of gas has to be increased, that his wife, and himself by extension, was never proud of his native country until that point in 2008, that he couldn't stay on message without his PreTOTUS.

So, now some are surprised at how the economy is doing? Why, were those persons blind, deaf, and dumb or simply not able to understand what The Messiah, the Anointed One, the Big O was selling?

(The Crypto Jew)As for those who have NO insurance, or preexisting conditions and haven't been able to even get insurance...what exactly is your gripe about people in such situations taking advantage of the reforms?

Gee Jeremy, these are TWO SEPARATE CONCEPTS, which Progressives like to confuse....You confuse using ObamaCare with keeping your insurance.

And the objections to ObamaCare were that in order to do one thing, you did not have to do the other...

Plus, ObamaCare doesn't really provide 100% coverage,e ither, for the people you've just named. So the result is people still may not have insurance, only the same can now be said of me...Thanx Jeremy.

Lastly, as further confusion, Jeremy confuses INSURANCE with CARE... the two are, again, separate issues.

But thank you for providing a base board from which critiques of ObamaCare may spring.

I'm not telling doctors what they have to charge or insurance companies who they have to cover or telling anyone to do anything at all. I'm not telling people who want to just cover their healthy children that they can't get those policies anymore. I'm not telling any seniors that their supplemental insurance got canceled.

All I did, along with others, is point out AT THE TIME that Obama was lying out of his *ss. Again. And that his claims that nothing would change for *anyone* other than the uninsured was a bald faced lie.

Why do you hate children and seniors, Jeremy? Why do you want to take their insurance away?

This bill never ever WAS about just covering those uninsured. It never was. If it was just that it would have tweaked medicare or medicaid to get the coverage. It was supposed to bring down costs, encourage Doctors not to amputate people's limbs for profit, give them the blue pill 'cuz it's cheaper than 6 more months of life.

If you are TRULY interested you could contact the Madison Law School and procure a copy of the latest "Open Enrollment" documents, Open Enrollment is probably just beginning there. Whilst it won't tell you what Meadhouse has chosen for insurance, it WILL tell the options available to Meadhouse....You should have no problem securing one, I'm pretty sure that the document, itself, is a "Public Document" subject to Open Records Inquiries.

Joe - Right now we have the highest insurance costs in the entire world, yet still hover right at number 37 worldide in actual care provided. And we're the only industrialized nation in the world that does not provide health care to its citizens

So I suggest, since you think president Obama is on the wrong track, you keep your insurance and the bill that goes with it.

Don't take advantage of any of the reform measures, and God knows you don't want to ever take advantage of any other "socialistic" measures relating to Medicare or Medicaid that might tarnish your free market beliefs.

Joe - I only care who pays for the insurance of those who whine and bitch about any reforms that might help those who do not have insurance, can't get insurance or can't afford insurance.

It's called hypocrisy, dumb fuck.

I've personally had long periods where I paid right out of my own pocket, other periods where employers or my own company provided a portion of the tab, but when we have 40 million Americans without coverage...what is it that makes YOU so sure none of this might help?

How the fuck do you know what will happen over the next five to ten years as the reforms kick in?

You don't.

You're just bitching along with the rest of the wingnuts who live on this site.

37 worldide in actual care provided. And we're the only industrialized nation in the world that does not provide health care to its citizens

Please define your terms…how are we 37th, in what measure. And bear in mind that these statistical measures are not always apple-to-apple, such as live birth and infant mortality. Again, we PROVIDE HEALTH CARE, the question is how best to pay for it.

So I suggest, since you think president Obama is on the wrong track, you keep your insurance and the bill that goes with it.I intend to, IF my employer’s plan meets the definition of “insurance” and therefore is not subject to mandatory changes. Changes which might boost the cost of providing insurance to such a level that it is cheaper to pay the fine than provide it. YOU KNOW THE VERY TOPIC OF THIS THREAD.

Don't take advantage of any of the reform measures, and God knows you don't want to ever take advantage of any other "socialistic" measures relating to Medicare or Medicaid that might tarnish your free market beliefs.

Statutorily I HAVE to, when I turn 65….so it’s not my “free market” beliefs it’s FEDERAL LAW, the very antithesis of free market beliefs.

Duh.

Not sequitur and non-responsive…I believe I have a better case for saying “D’uh” to you, for confusing terms, for missing the point of the thread and for being ignorant of the law.

Thank you again for providing a sounding board against which free market ideas can be best expressed.

How the fuck do you know what will happen over the next five to ten years as the reforms kick in?

I don’t know, because many of the things people like me said were going to happen ARE HAPPENING? I mean beyond that, it’s incumbent upon YOU to prove that the negative benefits are outweighed by the POSITIVE ones…

Waitaminnit ... You people are trying to have a reasonable discussion with Jeremy? Someone who looks up to pithed frogs for their intellect, who has the vocabulary of a diseased prostitute with Tourette's Syndrome, and who aspires to someday have the integrity of a 419 scammer?

I hate to tell you this, folks, but your efforts are doomed to failure.

Every one of the following countries provide government/taxpayer funded health care to their citizens...and every one of them rank higher than America on the World Health Organization's ranking of health system quality.

So what is it the wingnuts here think we know...that they don't know? And what is it you're all so afraid of...considering we pay the very most for damn near the very least?

Yes, and I believe WHO counts as one of the measures as to whether or not you have an NHS…meaning that automatically the US can’t score that well…then there is the idea of infant mortality…we say it’s a live birth if the baby is born alive, and so its an infant death if that infant subsequently dies…not so other nations.

You need to “unpack” WHO statistics, Jeremy.

But you keep bringing the same points up, thread after thread, allowing us to inform the new Althouse readers of the falsity of so many Progressive claims. Again, thank you.

But I bet the citizens of countries that have national health care pay one hell of a lot less for their health care than we do. That’s as may be, but they also have lessened life expectancies for a number od disease, and in certain nations they face Death Panels…in Britain I believe its acroym is NICE. Should your health care exceed ~45,000 per year you don’t get that treatment.

Jeremy, aren't you being well treated, at least as you wish to be, according to your station in life, which is much lower than the piss-poor ignorant asshole you are in fact. Please, our condolences and may you get better. Now, perhaps allow someone else in your class to use your class screen name.

The "uninsured" people who are only "uninsured" because of the new laws, such as those children who would have been insured under "child only" policies by parents who would have paid out of pocket but who may no longer have the option because those policies are no longer offered...

(The Crypto Jew)Penultimate: “next to the last”, not sure it’s misused. I still assume you’re joking. After all, Sixty Grit, whether I’m from or even IN Britain is rather irrelevant, isn’t it? Either in terms of this debate or my tele-presence in Althouse…

If our care is so outstanding...explain why we're rated at number 37 by the World Health Organization.

Because the way they rank countries, as numerous people have pointed out, and you can different rankings depending on what factors you choose to give weight to. Some of these factors are only dubiously correlated with quality of health care.

Since you can't read I don't expect you to remember what other people said about it.

But go on telling us how many people suck cock and balls.

See, what you don't get is that lots of people read the comments but don't comment. At this point no one pays attention to anything you say, because it's almost all abuse.

And so you push people away from your opinions. How much sense does that make.

On the global warming threads do you know how much harder you make it for me to persuade people that the climate scientists are not liars? If you cared about that issue, you would moderate your tone or shut the hell up.

But I'll say it because so many other predictions were right, and I'll go with the team that was right in the past. They're far more likely to be right in the future.

As has been pointed out...

The bad stuff? We all saw it coming. We made predictions that have come true already as people respond rationally to the new situation. We called Obama on his lies, and how he's back-tracking, doing some spin to say that he never promised that anyone would be able to keep the health insurance they prefer.

There is no reason at all to think anything other than that the other predictions are likely to be correct as well. To keep costs down there *has* to be rationing. Medicare has already been "cut" to pay for the new laws. People are going to be denied treatment, nothing particularly new there for the lost causes or experimental stuff, only now it's going to be a function of the State to deny expensive care. It will be the State deciding who gets treatment or not.

Death panels.

And we're supposed to support this because it *might* help some fraction of the population? Maybe? Got to wait to see?

Being right about something, or at the least being *honest* would make that trust in "wait and see" just a little bit less irrational.

Telling lies isn't a good way to get people to trust you know what you're talking about... which describes Obama.

Pelosi at least didn't pretend to have a clue. Refreshing, that. But mostly because the quote to "pass it to find out what's in it" is just so... precious!

no one can refute my statistics, nor counter them with any objective or factual arguments.

http://www.bmj.com/content/324/7331/190.3.full

"The World Health Organization has postponed until 2003 a high profile report, originally due out this year, that compares the performance of health systems around the world.

The delay, announced last week in Geneva at the WHO's executive board meeting, amounts to an admission that the UN agency needs to improve its methods for comparing countries. Its first attempt to rank health systems, in 2000 (BMJ 2000;320:1687), provoked an outcry.

The original ranking, in the World Health Report 2000, was based on indicators of each nation's “healthy life expectancy,” the “responsiveness” of the health system to patients' expectations, and the fairness of the system for financing healthcare. France came first, Britain was ranked 18th, behind Greece and Portugal, and the United States trailed in at 37th.

But critics of the 2000 report said the data on which the rankings were based were scant. Where data were missing altogether, they were extrapolated from other countries' data. Some measures relied on value judgments and were taken from small, unrepresentative samples, the critics argued. Some nations, such as Brazil, protested furiously, and one academic dismissed the WHO approach in a commentary in the journal Health Economics as mere “marketing” (2001;10:93-100).

“The first report was important in that it brought the issue of health system performance to public attention,” says Peter Smith, professor of economics at the Centre for Health Economics in the University of York. “But it is very important that the scientific standard of the next one is much improved.”

Soon enough he will be an Ex-president who will follow in the footsteps of his role model as he whips up hatred against the Jews and works with Habitat for Humanity to build mosques on the sites of terrorist attacks.

We'll lose our medicare advantage at the end of this year I expect. Besides all the little things you get for having MA is one big thing: a stop loss.

The stop loss we've had the last several years is $3k and it mattered last year when I had $206k in heart surgery. If that or something like it happens again after this year we'll be exposed to possible bankruptcy because medicare is a simple 80/20, no stop loss.

We're going to have to try to dodge that if we can by buying some other kind of supplemental plan, but we won't even know what will be offered - if anything - until November 1st. And what other benefits we'll get, if any, and what additional costs we'll incur, won't be known until then.

Of course, we could just game the system somehow I guess. Sell our house and assets and give the money to our daughter so it would be sheltered in case of bankruptcy, something like that. That's pretty hard to imagine.

I haven't read the comments in a while, but it's nice to know that some things never change:

Jeremy is STILL trolling Althouse's site looking for someone, anyone, please, to suck his dick.

You'd think he could have saved his allowance and bought himself an evening with a hooker in the intervening months...but here we are, months later, and he's still begging for a little fellatio from anyone who will listen.

I don't quite understand why everybody is using the Democrat term "Health Care Reform," since, as far as I have read or heard to date, there is little or nothing in the bill about "health care." Rather it is about medical insurance, i.e., how medical care is paid for, and the aim seems to be that all medical care be pre-paid, which, whatever it is, surely cannot be called "insurance" either.

Furthermore, it is apparent that the ultimate aim is for a "single payer system," i.e., the Government handles the "insurance," or, as a fallback, private insurers as directed by the Government in every detail. The medical care industry then, for all practical purposes, become Government employees. (See" The Golden Rule.)For how well this works, we do not need to go to Britain for examples. We have the Veterans' Administration and the Indian Health Service right here in the good old U.S. of A.

Do people still think this wasn't intentional? The entire point was to create an unsustainable system that would have to be "fixed." That's why congress didn't care about the fine print because they were going to change it anyway.

But I do not think Congress is going to "fix" it, because whichever party will "control" Congress after January 2011, at least the next two years are going to be WWI style trench warfare.

Another thought about Government control of the medical industry, or anything else for that matter, is that the bureaucracy will always aim for "stability," after all that's what is wanted from them, and will work to protect the whalebone corset and buggywhip industry to the best of their abilities, which are considerable in that field.

In his list of nations, one statistic that Jeremy didn't mention is that they are all sinking by the bow economically, partly because of those wonderful health plans paid (through the nose) by the people.

The other thing he doesn't mention is that every citizen of those nations comes here for good health care, if they can get the price of the flight.

I am not surprised that Jeremy keeps citing that discredited WHO report. After all, WHO is a UN organization, and the libs love the UN. The UN, of course, is the same organization where Iran was recently elected to serve on its Commission on the Status of Women - the same Iran where women are stoned for adultery.

What must always be understood about the UN and all of its various commissions, organizations, etc., is that it is all political, and countries with populations lower than some of our cities have as much representation in the General Assembly as the U.S. does. The result is that many of its actions are designed to make the U.S. look diminished to the rest of the word. Indeed, the only country that ranks lower in their esteem is Israel. The whole thing is hilarious, because the UN is headquartered in NYC, when the ambassadors are in town, they routinely double park with their diplomatic plates, and then we pay far more than our fair share to support the organization. And the thanks we get? UN agencies like WHO designing studies to make the U.S. look bad by utilizing highly questionable study techniques.

It's the age old fascist trick. They say that they will let the private companies compete...and then cause one picked fascist company to enjoy the advantage of government support and sponsorship. A larger version of this game is practiced on us by China, Inc.

And I just want to remind everyone that back during the election *every* Republican knew this, had a basic understanding of market forces, and nearly every Obama supporter called them paranoid racists who clearly couldn't read.

There were so many blatant lies told about this bill -- so many things that we know were known about it in advance but covered up for the sake of shoving it through -- I keep wondering whether one could sue the Federal Government for deliberately misleading people about it in order to gather support.

Seriously? Is there some lawyer who wants to take this on? Because I think we've got a case.

I've had my life saved twice, going on a third time under the U.S. private system.

I researched the availability of treatments and wait times in both Canada and the U.K.. Under either system, I was guaranteed to be dead before getting what I needed if it was even allowed to be provided. Some of the treatments that saved me were not permitted, and those that were had wait times multiples of I had to wait.

U.S. system = I'm alive 4 years so far.

Socialized system = I'm dead for the last 4 years.

I will never appreciate the foolishness or evil of such a system.

The W.H.O. can kiss my still warm and rosy ass. The people who depend on me offer their left cheeks as well.

The real question is: considering how exceptional our health care is, why did the idiots rate it so low.

You have to ask yourself why you would believe such a rating. To assume the rating is valid in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary demonstrates a willing ignorance, probably based on some political agenda that overwhelms logic. You know, like liberalism.

I'm not rude enough to call anyone a liberal, but if you buy that crap, you just might be a liberal.

"There's nothing in the bill that says you have to change the health insurance you've got right now. If you were already getting health insurance on your job, then that doesn't change."

Added: So long as your employer is willing to pony up for the dramatic increases in insurance costs without passing them through to you or discontinuing health insurance.

Met with our insurance agent yesterday, and got a preview of the cost increases specific to Obamacare. Pay those increases out of pocket? We'll have to slash wages and other benefits or lay people off. Pass some of the premium costs on to employees? Gov't penalty. Drop insurance? Gov't penalty, but far less than the full insurance cost. Sure sounds like the system was gamed in favor of ruining the current employer-paid insurance market, doesn't it?

Doctors in Japan see twice as many patients as US doctors. Step it up, dudes!

True that if everyone can afford to see a doctor, more people will see doctors. But reaize we have the fourth fewest dcctors per capita of any industrialized country. We could study what France and Germany and Scandinavia do to get more MDs. Or take a lesson from Greece, with twice as many doctors per capita.

Did Jeremy really just provide a list showing that the UK has better health care than the US?

I wonder if Obama and fellow travelers understand that people get really freaking angry when these results are explained away with "But what I said is technically true!" People feel misled and then condescended to. You guys do realize there's an election in a few weeks?

We could study what France and Germany and Scandinavia do to get more MDs. Or take a lesson from Greece, with twice as many doctors per capita.

Sure, we could make med school free. But then that would mean we jack up costs as taxpayers take on that burden.

There are deep systemic issues that drive the cost of health care in our country, and the people who think we can make it all good by going to single payer or Obamacare are being simpletons. The fact is that cost drivers arise from deep within the system, from how doctors are educated to how they're paid to how med technology is funded and to the cost of pharmaceuticals. People want easy solutions, but there are no easy solutions without tearing the entire system apart and starting over.